


Canary Down

by themayqueen



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Closeted Character, During Canon, Gay Male Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:06:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themayqueen/pseuds/themayqueen
Summary: Raylan Givens left Kentucky for numerous reasons, some of them obvious and others more personal... private. When he's banished back to the Bluegrass, he knows it's only a matter of time before he runs smack dab into those reasons and things better left secret see the light of day.
Relationships: Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens, Dewey Crowe/Raylan Givens
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threenineteen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threenineteen/gifts).



> I don't usually include long author's notes, or any author's notes at all, but this fic felt like it needed one. So here are few things to keep in mind:
> 
> 1\. This is one of the first fics I've written for a tv show, and the only chaptered one. I typically write RPF. So this is pretty different and daunting.  
> 2\. This story follows the plot of season one, up to a point. If you don't enjoy seeing the real scenes from the show rehashed and rewritten, this probably isn't the fic for you. It may start out a little boring, but I assure you it will pick up and deviate from the real season one very quickly.  
> 3\. Being from the region where Justified is set, I've made a few changes to dialogue, locations, etc to make things feel more realistic to me. If you have any questions about my changes, please ask and I'll be happy to explain them. I love Kentucky and coal country, and I'll take any opportunity at all to talk about my weird, tragic home state.  
> 4\. Lastly, a big thank you to my boyfriend for giving me this particular plot bunny when we rewatched the show together.

_In the deep, dark hills of eastern Kentucky  
That's the place where I trace my bloodline  
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone  
"You will never leave Harlan alive"_  
\-- You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, Darrell Scott

Kentucky had a particular smell all its own, one Raylan had never smelt anywhere else, nor had he ever quite been able to pinpoint just _what_ it was. In the flat, central part of the state, he might have likened it to horseshit, just to be funny, but that wasn’t entirely accurate. And in the coalfields it was another smell entirely, one that seeped right into your bones just like everything else about that place.

Raylan could have sworn that smell, whatever it was, had settled on him from the moment his plane touched down and not even lye soap would wash it off.

There were no direct flights from Miami to Lexington; by the time Raylan had fought his way through Hartsfield-Jackson to avoid missing his connection, landed in the Bluegrass and dropped his bags off at a cheap motel between Lexington and Richmond, it was nearly time for his newly assigned place of work to close for the day. His footsteps echoed in the hallway, all that was missing from the scene a mythical tumbleweed. None of the few people still glued to their computer screens even noticed his entrance, but Art Mullen was poised and ready, as if he’d spotted Raylan coming a mile away.

“A bit of a comedown from the Miami office, I’d expect,” Art remarked.

Raylan flashed him a quick smile that he imagined looked just as painful as it felt. “Oh, not with you here.”

“Good to see you,” Art replied as the two shook hands. “Well, I won’t overwhelm you with everybody’s name right now. You want to go have a drink?”

“Sounds good.” Raylan replied.

“Follow me, and I’ll pack up, and we’ll go.” Art turned toward his office. Over his shoulder, he added, “You look the same as you did at Glynco… same coat, same boots.”

“The boots are fairly new.”

“Don’t tell me that hat is.”

Raylan sighed. “No, it’s old.”

“Have a seat. You were working fugitives in Miami, huh?”

“Yeah, I did,” Raylan replied, watching as art picked up his briefcase. 

“Yeah, well, here everyone does everything… fugitives, witness relocation, judicial protection, forfeitures, prisoner transport. Boy, every office I ever worked in, prisoner transport was the shit detail. Chief always used it as punishment. But here we all do it.”

“Even you?”

“Oh, hell no,” Art breathed out a laugh. After a beat, he added, his voice softer, “I heard about you and Winona.”

“From who?” Raylan asked, although he supposed it didn’t matter. The grapevines in Kentucky were as thick as the kudzu; few things stayed secret for long if they weren’t buried deep enough. Raylan knew that all too well.

“Winona. She works here.”

“In Lexington?”

Art eyed Raylan as though he’d asked the stupidest question possible. “In the courthouse. She’s a court reporter.”

Raylan felt himself falter a bit. He supposed he _should_ have known that much about his ex-wife. It wasn’t as though the two had parted on particularly bad terms, but he’d had more pressing issues than keeping up with her every move. She had remarried, that much he knew, though his thoughts about the new husband were best kept to himself. He stuttered a bit as he tried to compose a response that would befit the wayward first husband. “Well, I… I knew she was coming back to Kentucky. I think her mom took ill.”

“Well, I thought that was why you picked Kentucky.” There was a hint of mirth in Art’s tone, but Raylan knew that was the usual for him. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if he’d made a joke at your expense or if he was just laughing at something in his own mind.

“Art, no offense… I didn’t pick Kentucky.”

Art chuckled. The former, this time, Raylan supposed. “Yeah, I talked to your marshal down there in Miami. Tell me about the shooting.”

“It was justified.” The two men eyed each other for a moment, something in Art’s eyes that Raylan couldn’t quite place. “You concerned about me coming down here?”

“It’s a small office, Raylan.” He gave Raylan a faint smirk. “I’m concerned when we switch brands of coffee. Is your dad still down there in Harlan?”

Raylan sucked in a breath. “Far as I know.”

“Thought you were from there. Reason I ask… the U.S. Attorney’s trying to build a case against this guy in Harlan. And he’s about the same age as you. It’s a small town, thought you might know him. Boyd Crowder?”

The name alone was like ice water poured straight down his back. “My God, Art, any other shit you wanna dump on me tonight?”

“You do know him.”

“Yeah, I know him. Yeah, Boyd and I dug coal together when we were nineteen.”

****

“Well, Boyd, what do you think?”

Boyd eyed the skeleton of a building in front of them. It was a new wing for the federal prison’s medical center or something like that. Truth be told, he hadn’t paid that much attention to the signs or to Jared’s plan, because he had already been formulating one of his own. “Well, Jared, I think it sucks.”

“What? Why?”

“I appreciate the sentiment, wanting to go after a federal building under construction. But, you see, we’d need us a whole box of Emulex to bring that down, and that’s only if you got cuts in the steel. And all we got’s a rocket launcher. And impressive as that is, the only thing it’s gonna do is knock some shit around.” Boyd could see that Jared didn’t appreciate his explanation, dumbed down as it was for present company’s benefit. “Don’t you worry about it. We’ll just to go Plan B.”

“Plan B?”

“Oh yeah,” Boyd replied. “Yeah, there’s always a Plan B.”

Boyd spread out a virtual map of Lexington across his mind and rattled off directions to Jared. On his last trip out this way, he had picked up an interesting tidbit about the preacher of a church on the veritable wrong side of the tracks. Boyd’s mind was always working like that, filing away bits of information for future usage. It meant he’d never had to put much effort into doing homework or even showing up for school to graduate near the top of his class, yet the teachers at Evarts had always made it clear he’d never amount to anything. Coming from the sort of folks he came from meant the school wrote him off from the start as a lost cause. If his brother could win them a football championship and still not get any sort of scholarships, what hope was there for him? He knew he had the grades and test scores for college, but he also knew that didn’t mean a good goddamn to the counselors who practically tucked tail and ran when someone like him was nearby. 

So he found other uses for his smarts and talents. It turned out there were plenty.

The city around them was becoming more and more dilapidated; in different company, Boyd might have remarked on how except for one noticeable difference it might as well have been Harlan. Instead, he said, “Now, it used to be a couple of crackers in and SUV would set the jungle on edge. These surely are end times.”

Jared mumbled something that might have been agreement. Decent conversation had been sorely lacking on this particular mission, and Boyd’s patience at having to carry the full weight of the conversation was wearing thin. 

“All right, this is it right here,” Boyd said, pointing down the street. “Let’s shoot straight up here, make a right.”

They came to a stop down the street from a building that looked absolutely nothing like a church except for a large sign proclaiming it so. A handful of men stood around outside, the loudest of them sporting full dashiki and all. 

“Well, I believe I can take ‘er from here,” Boyd remarked, stepping out of the vehicle and grabbing the rocket launcher from the backseat. 

“What, you gonna blow up that church?” Jared asked, as slow on the uptake as ever. “Boyd! There’s people on the streets. They’re gonna see us. They’re gonna ID my car.”

“You worried about your car?” Boyd remarked, hefting the rocket launcher into place on his shoulder. 

If Jared responded to that, Boyd didn’t hear it. He was back in desert now, or deep in a mine, tuning out everything else around him while his eyes sought out the target and everything else around him fell away. One degree off and everything would go to utter shit. 

“Fire in the hole!” The familiar refrain sounded like it had come from someone else’s mouth, but the finger that pulled the trigger was without a doubt his own.

****

Art had been kind enough to pick a bar that, although it was little more than a hole in the wall, wasn’t too far from the hotel Raylan planned to call home for the foreseeable future. The two shared a few drinks in companionable silence, but Raylan knew Art was just waiting for him to start spilling the beans about Boyd Crowder and just why he’d had such a reaction to hearing the name for the first time in nearly twenty years.

“Boyd became a powder man,” Raylan finally said. “He'd crawl down the hole with his case of Emulex 520, come out stringing wire, call out ‘fire in the hole’ to clear the shaft. She'd blow, and we'd go back in, dig out the pieces. We weren't what you'd call buddies, but you work a deep mine with a man, you look out for each other.”

That was just scratching the surface, but Raylan didn’t see the need to dredge up more ancient history right then. Of course he had known Boyd; their graduating class had been somewhere around a hundred souls. Everyone knew everyone. 

If Art suspected there was more to the story that Raylan wasn’t saying, he knew better than to say it.

“Well, after that, he joined the army and he went to Kuwait for Desert Storm,” Art said, his voice slightly slurred by the drink he was sipping. “When he came back, after a couple years, he quit paying his taxes, claimed that he was a sovereign citizen. And so the U.S. Attorney sent him down to Alderson. That's where he got involved with the patriot movement and the white-supremacy bullshit, got them making horseshit bombs--you know, fertilizer and fuel oil. They'll come into a town like Somerset, and they'll blow up a car. And then while the cops are busy, they'll go rob a bank.”

“Saw that in a Steve McQueen movie,” Raylan remarked. He had to admit, none of what he’d heard shocked him all that much. Boyd had been soft-spoken and articulate, the sort of person you felt could have really been something different, someone important and powerful, if he’d been born anywhere but up a Harlan County holler and into anything but the Crowder clan. But Boyd had ambition, such as it was, and Raylan wasn’t surprised he’d put it to criminal use. 

“Yeah, well, these guys ain't movie actors.” Art slid a folder across the bar toward Raylan, open to an arrest sheet with a mugshot that was like seeing a ghost. “Did he change much?”

“Other than the fact he's now a racist asshole?” Raylan remarked, earning a small chuckle from Art. “He's lost some hair, but that's about it.”

****

Boyd had given Jared directions down a quiet road where he knew there would be no witnesses but the crickets that played their nightly symphony along the river.

He stared at Jared’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. “How come you didn't want to blow up that church?”

“I told you. I didn't want them to I.D. my car,” Jared replied.

“I got to thinking that maybe you had an aversion to hurting people.”

Jared wheezed out a laugh. “Hell, no.”

“Yeah, well,” Boyd said, “I also got to thinking that a building under construction might just be the kind of innocuous target... You know what that means? That means harmless.” 

“Huh?” Jared’s expression was blank, which came as no surprise to Boyd. And they said the education system in Kentucky was abysmal. 

Boyd spoke slowly, like a parent to a child or a teacher to that one student who just refused to learn, “It might just be the kind of harmless target that the Federal Bureau of Imperialism might be willing to sacrifice in order to get somebody deep in the movement.”

Jared spun around to face Boyd. “You think I'm a snitch?”

“All I know is you don't have any tattoos; you keep rubbing that head like you don't think that hair's gonna grow back.” The irony that he was trying to ferret out fairweather Nazis was not lost on Boyd. But he couldn’t afford to have those working for him not be true believers. 

“You think I'm a snitch 'cause I rub my head?” 

“I mean, you understand where I'm coming from, right? I mean, you come out here from Oklahoma--”

“No.” Jared shook his head and spun back around, obviously following the plot now.

“--full of piss and vinegar, talking about how you were tired of spray-painting Synagogues, saying you want to blow some shit up.” 

Jared’s face was turning red now, and Boyd didn’t know if it was from anger or embarrassment. He wasn’t so sure it mattered. “Hey! You don't believe me, you check it out. Why don't you call Oklahoma?”

“Oh, we are,” Boyd replied. “Devil's doing it as we speak.”

“Yeah. You'll see, Boyd. I ain't no snitch.” Jared sounded like a petulant child, and Boyd decided he’d had enough of it. Whether or not Jared was the real deal, he was a liability now; his hesitancy to go along with Plan B had shown that he just might turn if a better opportunity presented itself.

“Yeah, well, like you said, we'll see.” 

Boyd pulled his old revolver from its place on his hip and fired off one shot. With his back to him, Jared didn’t even see it coming or have a chance to holler. Once he was sure Jared wasn’t going to move again, he pulled out his cell phone and called Devil.

The sound of video games and hillbillies cussing at each other nearly drowned out Devil’s greeting. “Hey, how'd it go?” 

“The primary was a waste of time, but took care of the secondary just fine.” 

“Where you at?” Devil asked. In the background, a door opened and shut, and the din lowered enough that Boyd could hear himself think again.

“East of 75 on Old Richmond Road.” 

“Oh, hey,” Devil remarked. “We got a call from Oklahoma. Jared checks out.” 

“Oh?” Boyd couldn’t decide whether he was surprised or not; ultimately, it didn’t matter.

“How'd he do?” 

Boyd took a look at the corpse in the driver’s seat and sighed. “I had to let Jared go.”

“Oh. Was it 'cause you didn't trust him or you just didn't like him much?” Devil was smarter than anyone with that nickname had a right to be, but that wasn’t saying much. 

“Probably a little bit of both,” Boyd admitted. He glanced out at the river around him, then back at Jared’s body. “I am gonna need you to pick me up, though.”

He didn’t wait for a response before hanging up.

****

Raylan’s hotel, one of those old run-down affairs that only stayed in business due to its proximity to the interstate, was so old-fashioned that it had an analog clock radio. He liked that. Before settling down to sleep, he set it to a country station, then drifted off to scattered dreams of being down a deep mine he couldn’t find his way out of.

He didn’t put too much stock in dreams, but even that was too on the nose for Raylan. Whatever it did or didn’t mean, he knew he would need a lot of coffee to get through the day. A quick stop at a gas station supplied that and a chicken biscuit, and with those needs satisfied, he headed on up 75 to the courthouse.

The marshals’ office was on the third floor of the federal courthouse, and a little sweet talk directed at the woman at the front desk revealed that Winona was at work just down the hallway on some sort of fraud case. 

Raylan wasn’t so sure that she would want to see him, but he needed to see for himself that she was doing well. Their marriage, such as it was, had never been unhappy but Raylan knew he had never given Winona everything that she needed. They simply gave  
each other something familiar to cling to, someone who understood, but that wasn’t enough to make it work for the long term.

He slid into a seat in the back row; she wasn’t facing him anyway. Raylan had to admit she looked good; her burgundy dress brought out the hint of red that she’d swear wasn’t in her hair. She might have gained a few pounds, but not in a bad way. Her new husband must not cause her so much stress, Raylan thought. That was good. She deserved to be able to relax and settle into a comfortable life where she didn’t have to worry or play pretend.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he was glad he’d remembered to silence it before entering the courtroom. 

Raylan pulled it out and saw Art’s name on the screen. “One second.”

He stepped out into the hallway and slipped his hat back on.

“Sorry, I was in the courtroom. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Don’t bother,” Art replied. “We’ve got a situation out on Old Richmond Road. Just go ahead and meet us out there. Dispatcher’ll get you a car and the address. You know the place?”

“Old Richmond Road,” Raylan repeated. “I think I know where that is.”

In truth, he didn’t have a clue, but marshal’s cars came equipped with GPS these days, and Kentucky had almost joined the twentieth century enough for that to be useful on the state’s crumbling roads. This particular one was barely off the interstate, but looked like it might as well have been in another century. One of those old green steel bridges spanned the muddy Kentucky River; a handful of police cars sat on it, clustered around a Bronco.

“County sheriff’s deputy found it just after dawn,” Art said by way of a greeting as Raylan approached the blood-spattered truck. “Name’s Jared Hale. Bureau has him listed as some kind of Aryan knight. Oklahoma driver’s license and registration.”

Raylan surveyed the carnage; just one shot, despite the spray that made it look so much worse. Point blank range. That took a certain sort of person to pull off. “You got him connected to Boyd?”

“Mmm, so far, tenuously,” Art replied, leading Raylan toward a cruiser with a variety of evidence bagged and laid out on the hood. “I talked to his sister in Tulsa, and she said that he came to Kentucky to hook up with some commandos.” 

Boyd’s reach was longer than Raylan had realized, if these losers were coming from other states to do his bidding. Classmates had joked that he was most likely to become a cult leader; their jokes had been closer to the truth than anyone had likely realized, if the scene in front of him was anything to judge by. Raylan snapped back to the present as Art motioned toward a bagged and tagged revolver.

“Now, that’s probably the murder weapon. It’s recently been fired. There’s no prints on it. In fact, the whole vehicle’s clean, except for this.” Art used a pen to pick up a piece of something army green. “Now, do you know what that is?”

Raylan mumbled a no. 

“I didn’t either,” Art replied. “That is the cap that goes on the end of a rocket launcher.”

“No shit,” Raylan replied, not missing the hints of both shock and amusement in Art’s voice. Even for the state’s second biggest city, this was some real shit. 

“Mm-hmm.” Art seemed almost pleased with himself, as though he’d just cracked the entire case wide open. “Last night in Lexington, we had a church bombing. And the Feeb says that whoever did it used a rocket launcher.”

****

“All the wits say the same. Two white males drove up in a dark S.U.V. They parked at that corner by the curb. One male got out with what Looked like a bazooka. He said a few words and then fired at the church.”

Firemen were still on the scene, hoses trained on the building, though the fire had been out for some time. The air smelled like wet skunk, and all the water being poured into the supposed church to prevent any hotspots from flaring up didn’t seem to help with the stench.

“What did he say, the fella that got out of the SUV?” Raylan asked the other deputy marshal, who he had just been introduced to as they walked up to the scene. 

“One said it was ‘liars and hos,’” Tim replied. “Another heard ‘time to go.’ My favorite's ‘hidy hidy hidy ho.’”

“Maybe we should put out an APB out on Cab Calloway,” Raylan remarked, suddenly reminded of the old records his aunt used to play for him.

“I think he's dead,” Tim deadpanned.

So he either wasn’t one to joke with or was a little too much of a straight man, Raylan noted. “Then he should be easy to find.”

“The pastor had it different,” the other deputy marshal—Rachel, Raylan thought her name was—said, glancing down at her notes. “He heard the man say, ‘fire in the hole.’”

Raylan glanced at Art, trying to ignore that feeling shooting up and down his back for the second time in as many days. A commotion from a few yards away caught all of their attention before either could remark on that particular turn of phrase; the pastor was arguing with one of the staties.

Art turned back to the marshals. “Did the good pastor say he got a good look at the shooter?”

“He says no,” Rachel replied.

“I bet if we put Crowder in a lineup and told the pastor that the trigger man was there, it might jog his memory,” Art remarked. “Rachel, why don't you go ask our old friend if he'll have a word with us?”

She shot Art a look, but took a few steps toward the pastor.

“Be nice,” Art added.

“When am I ever not nice?” She didn’t even justify that with a turn of her head.

“You think Fandi's gonna want to cooperate?” Tim asked, and Raylan began to suspect there was some history here that he wasn’t privy to.

“Fandi is Ethiopian by way of Jamaica by way of being completely full of shit,” Art explained. With a smirk and a motion toward the now fallen and charred church sign, he added, “The temple of the Cool and Beautiful J.C. was one of those churches that claims that marijuana is a sacramental herb.”

“It is protected by the constitution!” Fandi shouted.

“The constitution of dope sellers?” Rachel asked. “'Cause selling ganja to kids means you're a drug dealer.”

“I could've sworn I told her to be nice,” Art mumbled, though his tone implied that he knew it had been a lost cause. He walked toward the preacher and raised a hand. “Pastor Fandi, if I could just talk to you for just one moment—"

“No, you could not,” the man replied, turning to walk away from them.

“I saw Peter Tosh once,” Raylan said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew they were _probably_ a mistake, but it was too late to take them back now. In any case, the pastor might just be willing to cut the new guy some slack. It wasn’t like Fandi could tell them any less than he already had.

Fandi spun back around. “You assume 'cause I'm black and have a Jamaican accent, I like reggae?”

“People assume a lot about me. It's the way of the world.” If he thickened his accent up just a bit for that particular comment, he doubted anyone but the pastor noticed. 

The two stared at each other for a long moment. Raylan knew it was a risk, and one he perhaps hadn’t calculated properly, but the chip on Fandi’s shoulder could be seen a mile away. A boy from Harlan who’d made it outside of Kentucky and had to deal with people pretending they couldn’t understand his drawl could end up with a pretty comparable one of his own. 

“How was he, Peter Tosh?” Fandi finally asked. His hackles were still up, but at least he was talking and not yelling.

“Ehh... It was not my taste,” Raylan admitted. With a grin, he added, “but the girl I was chasing loved him. And I let her stay till the encore before I took her off to jail.” 

The pastor gave a faint smile of his own. “What do you want?”

****

“Did you know Bowman Crowder, Boyd's brother?” Tim asked Raylan over his shoulder.

“Sort of,” Raylan replied. Bowman was a few years older and seemed to be the only person in the world that Boyd truly admired or cared about. “Star running back in high school. Boyd was always saying Bowman had the goods to go pro. I was never that sure.” 

“You remember the girl he married, Ava?” Tim asked, as though he already knew the answer to that question. 

“Well, if it's the same one, she lived down the road,” Raylan replied, memories of a cheerleading uniform and cut-off shorts springing to mind. “She's married to Bowman?”

Tim lead them into a room piled high with boxes full of case files. “She was. She ended the union last night with a thirty-aught-six. Plugged him right through the heart.”

“Hmm,” replied Raylan. He hadn’t known her that well, but she had always seemed the type to do whatever it took to get what she wanted. The most surprising thing he’d heard so far was that she’d settled for someone like Bowman who stood little chance of making it farther in life than the next holler.

“That's the sheriff's report.” Tim handed Art a manila folder. “She admits shooting him; says she got tired of Bowman getting drunk and beating her.”

“She still in custody?” Art asked.

“She was arraigned 10 minutes ago, R.O.R.”

“Did you talk to her?” Art asked. If he had, that would probably explain why he already knew that Raylan knew her; if she’d heard tell that he was back in Kentucky, she would probably be on the lookout for him already.

“I did,” Tim replied. “I told her, given Boyd's reputation, he's probably gonna come looking for her. She said it's none of our business. I told her it is if he shoots her.” 

“We should go talk to her again.” Art picked up the folder and tapped the page it was open to. “Is that the address?”

“Yeah, but good luck on finding it. I tried to map it, got nothing.” 

Raylan casually glanced over Art’s shoulder, then slipped the folder from his hand. 

Art chuckled. “Well, I guess some places haven't been entered into the system, like North Korea and Raylan's hometown.”

“I know where it is,” Raylan replied.

If anyone had been taking bets on how long it would be before he was on the road back to Harlan, someone would have no doubt cashed in big time just then. Less than forty-eight hours. At least it wasn’t that long of a drive, Raylan rationalized, though it was bound to feel like it.


	2. Chapter 2

_You go to Harlan County  
There is no neutral there  
You'll either be a union man  
Or a thug for J.H. Blair_

_Which side are you on?  
Which side are you on?_  
\-- Which Side Are You On, Florence Reece

On paper—or GPS, as it were--it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Lexington to Harlan. In practice, it was closer to three, once you accounted for dodging coal trucks and trying not to blow a tire on roads that might have been paved once upon a time but not within your lifetime.

The address Raylan had been given was up a holler off Ages Creek. It had been a coal camp back in the day, full of large, identical houses. Few of those remained, interspersed with trailers; Ava and Bowman’s had been given a fresh coat of paint in recent years, but still managed to look like it was just waiting for the kudzu to take over. 

The screen door was open; Raylan could see Ava as soon as he stepped onto the porch, and she saw him, too. She covered the distance between them in a few quick steps, looking far too normal and happy for someone who had just committed murder.

“Oh, my god, Raylan,” she said, pushing the door open.

“You remember me, huh?” He replied, though the answer was obvious. A little flirtatiousness wouldn’t hurt.

Ava pulled him in close, and he pressed a soft, friendly kiss to her cheek. She turned her head so that their lips met, and it took Raylan a beat too long to realize exactly what was happening.

He pulled back as gently as he possibly could, but it hardly seemed to faze Ava.

“Oh, I never forgot you,” she said. “I had a crush on you from the time I was twelve years old. I knew you liked me, but you didn’t want to show it.”

“You were too young,” Raylan replied teasingly. Her crush had been glaringly obvious, and cute enough when she was just a junior high girl who hadn’t quite figured out her own sexuality yet. When she grew up, it became harder to dodge. 

“I was sixteen when you left,” she pointed out. “I heard you got married. Are you still?”

“Turned out to be a mistake,” he admitted.

“Mmm, wanna talk about mistakes? I told Bowman I wanted a divorce. He goes, ‘you file, you’ll never be seen again.’” Ava turned and walked back into the house, then stared back at Raylan, like she was daring him to defy her version of events. “He said I’d disappear from the face of the earth. Do you want a drink?”

“I’d love one.” The way this was going, he suspected he’d _need_ one before it was over. He hurried to follow her as she walked toward the kitchen with purpose, like she had just been waiting for someone to show up to hear her story.

“I married him a year out of high school, ‘cause he was cute, he was sure of himself and he told me he’d never work in a goddamn coal mine. He’d wear the blue and white of the University of Kentucky, and then he'd get drafted by a pro team. He wouldn't mind the Cowboys.” She paused, two glasses of top shelf whiskey in her hand, and opened the fridge. “What do you want in yours? I got Diet Coca-Cola, R.C. Cola, Dr. Pepper…”

“Just ice,” he replied. 

“I ever forget to fill the trays, Bowman would start slapping me. ‘What's wrong with you? Don't you know how to keep house?’ And that all started as soon as he realized he was never getting out of Harlan County. He blamed it on me, said it was my fault he had to dig coal. It was my fault that I had a miscarriage after he beat me with his belt and he didn't have a son to take hunting with him and his creepy brother, Boyd.” Ava stepped into the doorway next to Raylan and handed him his drink. “Last time he hit me was because I called his brother creepy to his face. Well, he kept after me with that belt ‘til I fell and I hit my head on the stove. I got up off that floor knowing that he was never gonna hit me again. The next night, he came in, I had his favorite supper on the table--ham and yams and cream-style corn and leftover okra fixed with tomatoes. I waited till he was shoveling food in his face. Then I got his deer rifle from the kitchen closet. And I went in there and I did what I had to do.” 

Raylan was unsure if she was waiting for a response or not. He suspected not. Following her gaze into the dining room, he saw there was still a large bloodstain on the floor next to the head of the table.

“I just finished cleaning up. I had to scrub the wall with Lysol, you know, to get the stain off of it. Lysol's the best cleaning product you can buy. I still got a knot where I fell and I hit my head on the stove. You want to feel it? Dear lord, my hair's a mess. You close your eyes. I don't want you to see me like this.” Ava put her hand in her hair, then turned and walked away, seeming self-conscious and unsure for the first time. A moment later, she reappeared around the other doorway into the dining room. “Raylan... the minute you walked in, I knew everything was gonna be all right. I was right about you.”

“About what?” He asked. She vanished through the doorway before he could reach her.

“Having a crush on you. You're a good kisser.” Came the response from up the stairs.

“I was thinking we'd have to stop doing that.”

“Why?” Her tone was both teasing and petulant, like a child.

“Well, this isn't a social call, Ava,” Raylan called up the stairs. “I came down to Harlan on business.”

Ava reappeared, clad only in a thin towel. “Well, you tell me all about your business when I get out of the shower.”

Before Raylan could fully process just how blatantly this murderess was trying to seduce him, the sound of the screen door being violently slammed open caught his attention. A short, practically comic figure appeared in front of him, looking just as perplexed by Raylan.

“Well, who the hell are you, the undertaker?”

Raylan put his hat back on. “I might be undertaking a situation here. Let me see your chest.” 

The man—boy?—lifted his wifebeater. Just as he’d suspected, there was a large, poorly done Nazi tattoo across the mostly hairless chest. He lowered his shirt and Raylan surveyed the full picture in front of him—hair that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a mullet or a mohawk, pants that would have been shorts on anyone taller, and an almost completely vacant stare.

“You buy that necklace or poach the gator and yank her teeth out?” Raylan asked.

“I shot her and ate her tail,” he replied, and Raylan could tell he enjoyed giving that answer, whether it was true or not.

“That would put you in Florida, around Lake Okeechobee.”

“Belle Glade,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Raylan Givens. I'm a deputy United States marshal. You mind telling me who you are?” Raylan took a few steps closer. The other man just stared at him. “You know your name, don't you?” 

“I'm Dewey. Dewey Crowe.” 

“I sent a boy to Starke from Belle Glade. Fella named Dale Crowe, Jr.”

“He's my kin,” Dewey replied, puffing out his chest as if to underscore the blood feud Raylan had unknowingly started.

“Huh,” Raylan replied, feigning surprise. “What are you doing here, Mr. Crowe?”

“I come to take Ava someplace.” He turned and shouted up the stairs. “Ava!”

“Hold on.” Raylan put a hand out to stop him. “Let me tell you something. You don't walk into a person's house unless you're invited. What you better do is go on outside. You knock on the door. Ava wants to see you, I'll let you in. She don't, and you can be on your way.”

“Well, all right,” Dewey replied, leering at Raylan. “I'm gonna go out. And then I'm coming back in.” 

He sighed as Dewey walked out; he might as well have tattooed his next move across his forehead to match the one on his chest. Raylan finished the rest of his drink in one sip and slipped off his jacket before walking out to the driveway.

Sure enough, Dewey had a shotgun trained on him.

“Mr. Crowe,” Raylan said, standing firm. “You better hold on there a sec while I explain something to you. I want you to understand. I don't pull my sidearm unless I'm gonna shoot to kill. That's its purpose, huh? To kill? So it's how I use it. I want you to think about that before you act and it's too late.”

“Jesus Christ, I got a scattergun pointed right at you.” Dewey was trembling so much he’d be lucky to hit the side of the house, let alone Raylan himself.

“Can you rack in a load before I put a hole through you?” Dewey stared at him, his pride obviously not letting him answer that one. After an awkward moment had passed, Raylan stepped in and yanked the gun from his hands. “Where'd you want to take Ava?”

“Man, I don't understand you,” Dewey practically whined, wiggling against the grip Raylan had on his arm.

“Boyd want to see her?” Raylan asked, dragging Dewey back toward his car.

“It's none of your business.”

“You know Boyd and I were buddies?” Raylan said, opening the car door and nudging Dewey inside. “We dug coal and drank beer together. In fact, you see him, you tell him I'm in Harlan, all right?”

Dewey didn’t answer that. Raylan wasn’t so sure the poor fellow hadn’t pissed himself. He unloaded the gun into the driveway before tossing it into the car. 

With a hand on the back of Dewey’s neck, he added, “Hey, if I was you, I'd give up this Nazi bullshit, go back to poaching gators... safer.” 

“Next time I see you, I'm gonna—”

Raylan didn’t give him a chance to finish that sentence. Dewey’s nose made a satisfying crunch as it landed against the steering wheel, setting off the car horn. Through Dewey’s grunts and groans, Raylan said, “You tell Boyd his old buddy wants to see him... Raylan Givens.”

Once he was certain that Dewey was gone, nothing more than a trail of dust and cloud of exhaust down the road, Raylan walked back into the house. The shower was still running. Not knowing what else to do, he settled down on the couch to wait. A photo album, the pages yellowed with age, was open on the coffee table, and he couldn’t resist the urge to flip through it. Maybe it would reveal something about Ava or the past twenty years in Harlan, a place that seemed as stuck in time as the moments captured on film in front of him. 

All it revealed was the gradual progression of age and the sparkle draining out of Ava’s eyes over the years.

“Who was that?” She asked, walking back into the room, her hair wet and her thin pink dress clinging a little too closely to her skin.

“Dewey Crowe,” Raylan remarked, closing the album.

“Oh, the one with the ‘Heil Hitler’ on his neck?” Ava remarked. “He was one of Bowman’s buddies.”

“You haven’t seen Boyd—I mean, since?”

“No,” Ava replied, sitting down next to him and stretching her legs. “But he’ll be after me, I know. He’s _been_ after me.”

“Yeah, that’s why we want to keep an eye on you,” Raylan said. “You know I’m… I’m with the marshal’s service.”

“I believe your mother told me before she passed. You been to see your father?”

Raylan let out something of a groan. He should have anticipated that question, and he didn’t have a ready answer for it. Anyone with half a mind should have understood why he wanted nothing to do with Arlo Givens, but around these parts, blood meant more than anything else. It couldn’t wash away all sins, though. 

Ava sense the need for a change of subject. “Are you looking for Boyd?”

“We are,” Raylan replied, “but we have to catch him in the act--robbing a bank, blowing up a church... making an attempt on your life.”

“Mine?” Ava let out a soft laugh that Raylan didn’t understand at all.

“You said yourself he'll be coming after you.”

“Raylan, Boyd don't want to shoot me,” Ava said, letting out another laugh—this one somewhere between embarrassed and flirtatious. “He wants to...you know, go to bed with me. You want me to help you catch him?”

“Umm, maybe you could just get him to talk to me.” Raylan was beginning to think that Ava was smarter and knew more than she was letting on. Maybe not smarter, exactly; cunning.

She tilted her head to the side. “I could do that.”

“You know where he is?”

“I do.”

“And did you want to tell me?”

Ava laughed again, tossing her head to the other side. “What do I get if I do?”

****

Ava had directed Raylan to an old church down Wild Cat Holler, which seemed a fitting name for Boyd to make his home base. Past a few rundown trailers he found the place; an old church whose congregation had died off or moved off years ago. It hardly looked occupied except for a variety of trash scattered around outside and extension cords running from the nearest single wide to give it electric. 

The door swung open and there stood Boyd, looking like the perfect parody of a country preacher in his all black outfit. He gave Raylan a wide smile and scurried down the steps to throw an arm around him like the old buddies they purported to be.

“Look at you! A suit, a necktie --looking good. Looking like a lawman.” Boyd turned back to the henchman of sorts who was standing further up the stairs, trying to size Raylan up. “Now, see, this is how you wear a hat, all casual, not down on your goddamn ears like you do.”

The other fellow’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.

“I heard you called on Ava. My boy Dewey said he had to run you off.”

“You believe that?” Raylan asked.

Softly, Boyd replied, “Not if you say it ain't so.”

“Shit, I'll take care of him.” The henchman finally found his voice.

“Devil, get us a jar and two glasses. This party's just for Raylan and me. Go on.” To Raylan, he said, “He just got his release, so he's feeling a little itchy.”

“I can tell.” Raylan wasn’t sure if that was meant to sound like a double entendre or not, but he decided it was best to assume it was.

Boyd chuckled as he led the way into the church. Only a few pews and other vestiges of its former life remained. A thrift store worth of furniture and old appliances had been scattered around, with various and sundry white supremacist flags and posters to, Raylan supposed, make it feel a bit more like home. He could only imagine how many of Boyd’s wayward followers squatted there at any given time.

Boyd offered Raylan his choice of two glasses full of a perfectly clear liquid. 

“Old times,” Boyd said, clicking his glass against Raylan’s. The glasses were surprisingly clean, given the surroundings, and Boyd’s stance just a little too close.

Raylan took the drink in one swallow, immediately regretting it. Fire and ice shot down his throat in quick succession, then back up it and out the top of his head. He let out a cough and a pathetic laugh. 

“You been gone too long.” Boyd chuckled.

“Goddamn,” Raylan choked out.

Boyd turned to put the mason jar back into the refrigerator that looked like it had seen better days, most of them in the 1960s. “So, what... what was life like in Florida?”

“Just as advertised... Sunny and hot.”

“You know, I just don't think I could take me a place so flat.” Boyd stepped in closer and lowered his voice, though no one else was around to hear. “You seen your daddy yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Boy, he was a wild man back in his day, wasn't he?” Boyd asked, as though he didn’t already know the answer to that understatement. He was just getting himself wound up, and Raylan figured it was best to let him go. “What was that scam he had going back in the early '90s? Stealing mining machinery, selling it to the Colombians, getting paid in cocaine... You remember that?”

“Guess I was gone by then.” Raylan mumbled, taking a seat on the pew in front of Boyd. “How's your daddy?”

“I suspect you know how my daddy is,” Boyd replied. There was something that almost resembled genuine vulnerability in his voice. 

Raylan knew neither one of them had had the best father figures; what they’d chosen to do with their lives had a direct correlation to that which anyone could see. It was just that Raylan had chosen to defy his, while Boyd seemed to live in a constant battle to one up Bo Crowder.

“Yeah, all those days, good and bad--they all long gone now.” In a moment, Boyd snapped back to his usual self, pulling up the façade like it was nothing. “Everything's changed. It's all changed. Mining's changed. No more following a seam underground. Cheaper to take the tops off mountains and let the slag run down and ruin the creeks. Hey, you remember the picket lines, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Raylan replied. The truth was, he was barely walking during the last big battle, but he remembered when film crews descended and stirred things up all over again.

“Courts backing the company scabs and gun thugs,” Boyd mused. “Whose side you think the government's always been on, Raylan, us or the people with money? And who do you think controls that money? Who do you think wants to mongrelize the world?”

“Who?” Raylan asked, though he knew it was practically a rhetorical question. Boyd had just been looking for a way to start spewing his rhetoric.

“The Jews.”

Raylan turned to face him. “Boyd... you know any Jews?”

“See...I recruit skins.” Boyd leaned against the pew, placing one hand softly on Raylan’s arm. It made his skin crawl. “They don't know no more than you do. And I have to teach them that we have a... a moral obligation to get rid of the Jews. See, it was in the bible.”

Raylan blinked. “W-where?”

“In the beginning. It's part of creation.” Boyd was really getting going now. He stood up, assuming his preacher’s stance once again. “See, in the beginning, right, you had your mud people. Now, they were also referred to as beasts because they had no souls. See, they were soulless. And then Cain--you remember Cain, now?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well, Cain... he laid down with the mud people, and out of these fornications came the Edomites. Now, do you know who the Edomites are?”

“Who?” 

“They're the Jews, Raylan.”

“You're serious?” He had to admit, Boyd was good. He knew how to sell a story. 

“Read your bible as interpreted by experts.” Boyd pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. He could barely finish the sentence without trailing off into laughter, which Raylan echoed. Of course he didn’t truly believe it. He couldn’t lie to Raylan, but the uneducated hicks he recruited who desperately needed someone to follow, someone to guide them, they could never see through his bullshit like Raylan could.

“Oh, you know, Boyd, I think you just use the bible to do whatever the hell you like.”

“Well, what do you think I like, Raylan?” The question was a dare, and Raylan wasn’t about to take the bait and say what he really thought.

“You like to get money and blow shit up.” Raylan stood up and took a few steps toward Boyd. “I know about your friend Devil and his record selling dope. And I'm willing to bet that you blew up that church in Lexington not because it was black, but because it was a dope store. Ten to one says you got paid to do it by some other dope dealer around who didn't like the idea of that preacher getting a free pass from the police. Win-win for you, wasn't it, Boyd? Not only did you get to blow something to smithereens, you got money. See, I'm giving you the benefit. You aren't mental. I know you're not stupid enough to believe that mud-people story.” 

“You think you know me?” Boyd asked, his voice low. At one time, the answer to that would have been yes. “Well, I know you, Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. I know you like to shoot bad people. I heard about that gun thug you shot in a hotel in Miami.”

“You heard about that?” Raylan wasn’t sure why that surprised him. He would have bet money that Boyd Crowder hadn’t spared a single thought for him in twenty years.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have TV's down here now, Raylan.” 

“Oh,” Raylan replied dumbly.

“But, you know, at any point, when you were looking at that gun thug, did you see your daddy's face?”

That question didn’t deserve an honest answer either. It was time to end the reunion and get down to the real reason he was there. “The reason I'm here... we're having a little lineup tomorrow at the courthouse.”

“What did I do now?”

“Well, listen, we got a witness who saw a man fire a bazooka into a church. And I'd appreciate it if you'd be in that lineup.”

“Oh, I bet you would,” Boyd said coyly. 

“You either show up, or we'll come get you.” Raylan put his hat on and took a few steps toward the door.

“Hey, Raylan, let me ask you a question,” Boyd said, stopping him in his tracks. His arms outstretched, as though he were asking for forgiveness or maybe deliverance, Boyd asked, “Would you shoot me if you get the chance?”

“You make me pull, I'll put you down.”

Boyd gave a sad sort of smile, as though he had both expected that answer and yet hoped for something different.

****

The next day, Boyd showed up at the courthouse just as asked. He looked almost presentable, but the picture was off just a bit. Maybe it was his messy hair or the way he’d buttoned his shirt all the way up. Maybe it was just something in who Boyd was. 

“Well,” he said, as Raylan walked him toward the door. “I did my part. I showed up.”

“I think the idea of walking in past a gathering of law enforcement appealed to you, especially since you knew that preacher didn't have the balls to pick you.”

“It's always good to see you, Raylan,” Boyd replied, ignoring Raylan’s observation entirely. The way he said Raylan’s name was almost like a curse… or a secret. Just before he reached the door, he turned back, his finger raised like what he was about to say had just occurred to him. “Hey. You know that man you shot in Florida? Well, my boy Dewey's cousin down there... he said he heard a rumor that you gave that gun thug twenty-four hours to get out of town or you'd shoot him on sight. Is that true?”

“I gave him the option to leave Miami,” Raylan replied. “He turned it down.”

Boyd stared him down. “What would you say if I made you the same offer? That you get out of Kentucky by tomorrow noon, or I'm gonna come looking for you. Does that sound fair?” 

“Now you’re talking.”

Boyd backed away, a strange secret smile on his face and his eyes never leaving Raylan’s.

Raylan turned and walked up the stairs. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Ava Crowder there, wearing an outfit so new and crisp he suspected she’d made a special trip to Dawahare’s before coming to Lexington for her court date. 

“Hey,” Raylan said, pausing a few steps down from her.

“Hey,” she replied. “My lawyer’s talking to the prosecutor. Come with me while I smoke?”

Raylan led the way across the street to the parking garage, where they were somewhat shielded from the wind. He stayed quiet as Ava lit her cigarette and updated him on the status of her case.

“I plead to manslaughter, and I won't have to go to prison. Though if I have to, I have to. It was worth it. Hey, why don't you come by for supper? I'll pick up a couple of fryers, fix you some biscuits and gravy.” She chuckled. “Look at you licking your lips.” 

“All my life, fried chicken's been my favorite,” Raylan admitted. “But I shouldn't.”

“Why not?”

He narrowly resisted the urge to roll his eyes. She had to know they were treading thin ice either, even if she didn’t know the particulars of the law. “Because... an officer of the law isn't supposed to be socializing with the defendant in a murder investigation.”

“Oh, I didn't know that.” Her faux innocent tone suggested that she probably did have some idea.

“It's sort of frowned upon.”

“Hmm,” Ava practically moaned out. “I'm fixing it anyway. You're a big boy, Raylan. You want to come, there's nothing on earth gonna stop you.”


End file.
